Would Californians be buying a pig in a poke if they were to pass Proposition 1A, a $9.95 billion bond issue to partially finance a high-speed train system?
The answer is elusive because we'll be voting in the blind. The state's High-Speed Rail Authority didn't produce an updated business plan by Oct. 1, as the Legislature decreed, that would lay out projected construction costs, ridership, fares and other vital details for voters.
Authority officials told a legislative hearing Thursday that the plan is late because the state budget was late and because its financial adviser, Lehman Brothers, went belly-up recently. They now say the plan won't be ready until Nov.8, four days after the Proposition 1A vote.
That didn't sit well with two senators on the Senate Transportation Committee, and one of them, Bakersfield Republican Roy Ashburn, exchanged harsh words with the authority's chairman, Quentin Kopp, a former senator and semiretired judge.
Kopp assured the senators that the project, linking the state's northern and southern metropolitan areas, would be "not just a feasible project but a successful project." Ashburn cited the failure to produce a business plan as required and sniped, "Why should anyone believe you?"
"You said that would happen, and you are a judge," Ashburn continued. "You and the authority are in violation of the law."
But Kopp cited the Legislature's failure to produce a timely budget and shot back, "You're in violation of the law."
"This is not about you," Ashburn continued. "This is about the people of California committing to a substantial debt. … Everything you said to us was a wish and a prayer."
The committee's Democratic chairman, Sen. Alan Lowenthal of Long Beach, was also critical, albeit in milder language. "We really don't have … a discussion of all the reasonable risks involved," he said, adding later, "Do we have the final assurances that it will work?"
It won't work, says Joseph Vranich, a rail transport expert who prepared a sharp critique of Proposition 1A for its opponents. He cited comparisons with existing rapid rail systems and said, "The train will be slower than they say it will, will carry fewer people than they claim it will and will cost much more than they admit it will."
So what are voters to believe? Kopp and others say the public is protected because only 7.5 percent of the bond money could be spent without legislative approval and the measure guarantees that federal and private financing will cover at least half the system's cost.
That 7.5 percent, however, is no small sum. It would be spent not on bullet trains but on local commuter systems in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area – which may be the key to the whole thing.
An 800-mile-long bullet train system sounds romantic, but could the main motivation behind the project be to get more money for urban commuters with the rest of the state paying for it?
Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.
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